Alit is a girl like any other.By night, she wards off clumsy advances from boring scribes and functionaries, and dreams of other lives she could have led.By day, she carries letters across dangerous Numush to add coins to her dowry, and awaits with some trepidation the day when her brother is finally old enough to sign her over to another man.Her world shatters when her tablet house is attacked, for the second time, by men with knives. They want to know more about h...

War has returned to conquered Ekka. At its heart, a sorcerer promises victory and, at last, freedom from oppression. All he asks in return is a throne.Hidden in the salt marsh, a banned cult hatches its own plots. Gemeti, daughter of a dying priestess, has few allies. If she is to a win a throne of her own, she will need support from all the wrong people.Rimush has good reason to distrust Ekka's would-be liberator. His own hands are not so clean. If he is to blunt war's bla...

Kamvar, a soldier, has lost his way. Leonine, a thief and sorcerer, has forgotten that he had one to lose.When the daughter of a High Priest finds herself exiled and hunted across the entirety of conquered Ekka, both men will remember who they are, and the country's invaders will learn that memories, unlike temples, are not so easily torn down.Pale Queen's Courtyard is the first novel by Canadian author Marcin Wrona, and a finalist in SciFiNow's 2009 War of the Words.